People who need people

Alright guys,
    I am not here to whine or make judgments on people, but this is something that has been bothering me for a while and it took today for me to experientially understand something that I already knew was quite a problem in today's p.c society.
Today, my friend Shannon and I took this gorgeous day as an opportunity to see the beach. Naturally, we took our beach bums over to downtown Laguna. Now, Laguna beach has it's friendly people (usually the barefoot millionaire surfer hippies), but today, I encountered some very distant and quite sour people. Now, I am by no means the perfect model citizen, but today I was feeling especially inclined to smile at every person who passed. Not one person looked at me. Everyone thought I was odd and continued walking. I said, Hi. and....crickets. Just being friendly. You would think I was dressed as a criminal with a hand gun showing by the way people were looking at me. But no, I was wearing a floral skirt and cowboy boots (real scary stuff). Shannon and I started talking about how sad it is that alot of people don't acknowledge others around them in every day life. Not all people are like this, but it seems like this is a sad epidemic. What happened to the smiles at strangers? What happened to the general sweetness of citizens?
After our chat on how silly it is that people don't look at you when you are near them, Shannon and I wandered to my favorite vegan restaurant in Laguna, called the Stand, and got ourselves some frozen fruit soft serve. There was a woman near The Stand who had two very large bull dogs that she was casually walking back to her work place. One of the drooling pups took took off as soon as it's collar came undone and waddled her fat self into into the street and back into The Stand. The woman, was screaming, NO!!!, clearly angry that she had no control of her dog. When the dog got into the Stand, the owner slipped and fell, trying to regain some control of the situation. People just watched her struggle until she said, "can somebody help me"? She took a hard fall, but I grabbed her dog for her while she tried to get up. Then, people started to ask her if she needed help. She didn't want to take it. She was clearly embarrassed at her fall and large scene she created. The dog continued to slip...and this woman was tearing up. She didn't want to be helped either. She needed people to help her gain some control, but she couldn't accept.
As we walked away from the uncomfortable vibes we got, both from her, and the bystanders, I thought to myself, jeeze, that woman was having a bad day. She fell pretty hard and people barely acknowledged her. It was only when she begged for help that people (including myself) felt appropriate to help her. Then, when I did help her, and others offered, she was too embarrassed to accept. I walked away, and I got an opportunity to actually understand what it felt like to be that woman. My slick cowboy boots don't do well on wet concrete, so I slipped and fell elbows first. BAM! I was bleeding pretty profusely, and I looked around, and not one person (besides shannon) even asked me if I was ok. There was a woman nearby, who looked at me, then looked away. There was a group of young boys who just stared at me from a distance. The only person who looked at me was a curly haired three year old boy who knew no social boundaries. He surely had tears in his eyes, cause he saw that I was hurt. Kids are very perceptive.


Perhaps this is due to the digital age that we live in. People are so plugged into their gadgets, that we rarely have the need to look at each other or interact. 90% of our interaction comes from online communication. I don't even need a person to check me out at the grocery store, the movie theaters, or any phone transaction. We have machines to do that. Here is the danger in this folks. We need each other. We need to look at one another more. Have you ever noticed how much a simple gesture of kindness or a smile from another human being completely changes your outlook? It's because we DO need to feel that love. I think we have lost some of that in the way we relate to people. Now, I am going to challenge myself (and others, if you dare to be a little bit weird) to make eye contact with people. To smile at passer-bys. To buy a coffee for the person behind you in line. Let's be neighbors. Let's invest in our communities. In some cases, you have to be cautious of strangers, but really people.....are you not going to walk across the street because you are afraid of getting hit by a car? Let's get rid of the fear of being humiliated. I'm ok with being weird, if it means we can re-connect.